Dan Lungren, R-Calif., speaks to supporters at a party at Zinfandel Grille in Gold River, Calif., on election night while flanked by his wife Bobbi Lungren, daughter Kathleen Lungren and her husband Jobe Ousman, Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2012. less

Dan Lungren, R-Calif., speaks to supporters at a party at Zinfandel Grille in Gold River, Calif., on election night while flanked by his wife Bobbi Lungren, daughter Kathleen Lungren and her husband Jobe ... more

Photo: Renee C. Byer, Associated Press

Image 3 of 5

Democrat Ami Bera, holding the slim lead over Lungren, speaks to supporters.

Democrat Ami Bera, holding the slim lead over Lungren, speaks to supporters.

Photo: Manny Crisostomo, Associated Press

Image 4 of 5

Scott Perkins hugs Eric Swalwell after Swalwell addressed his supporters during an election night event awaiting results in his bid for congress on Tuesday, November 6, 2012, in Pleasanton, Calif.

Scott Perkins hugs Eric Swalwell after Swalwell addressed his supporters during an election night event awaiting results in his bid for congress on Tuesday, November 6, 2012, in Pleasanton, Calif.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Image 5 of 5

California reforms produce surprises

1 / 5

Back to Gallery

Washington -- Rep. Pete Stark's defeat after four decades in Congress showed how two big election reforms have rattled California's ossified party politics.

A new primary system that sends the two candidates with the most votes to the November election regardless of party affiliation, and new legislative districts drawn by a Citizens Redistricting Commission were intended by good-government groups and moderate Republicans led by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to end the two-party stranglehold on elections and encourage moderates.

On Tuesday, the new system did just that, with Dublin City Councilman Eric Swalwell, 31, ousting Stark, 80, a fellow Democrat who was first elected in 1972.

President Trump addresses nation after mass shooting at Florida SchoolWhite House

"I just sensed that this open primary system really offered a new opportunity to engage the electorate," Swalwell said. "That if we talked to every voter rather than your traditional targeting of only your party - if we talked to Republicans, Democrats, Independents, that we could build a coalition of people who were ready for a new direction."

Although California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton had derided the "top two" system," Democrats scored a net gain of six House seats in California, matching their goal and the state's shift to the left.

Independent analysts said the combination of the two reforms was explosive this year.

"It will be difficult to parse out which made more difference," said Justin Levitt, a professor of election law at Loyola University Law School in Los Angeles, but he called the reforms "enormously significant" in a state where only one House seat had changed parties in 265 elections over 10 years.

Heated race

As bizarre as it was to see Stark fall to a fellow Democrat, more unusual was the brawl in Los Angeles between incumbent Democrats Brad Sherman and Howard Berman for one House seat, where before there had been two.

The race grew so heated that a sheriff's deputy once had to part the two rivals. Sherman won the election.

Neither race would have happened under the old primary system, where both parties conspired to carve districts along party lines to protect incumbents. The commission knitted communities together, regardless of their incumbent.

The new districts had "voters choosing their representatives rather than the other way around," said Levitt. That made for some scary races for incumbents in both parties that could knock off four Republicans, including Rep. Dan Lungren in Sacramento County, who was down by 184 votes against Democrat Ami Bera, and Mary Bono Mack in Palm Springs.

Together, the two election reforms "made life much more complicated for incumbents, and gave opportunities to people who heretofore had none," sad former Rep. Vic Fazio, D-Sacramento.

More choices

Experts said it is too early to say whether the "top two" primary system will produce more moderates, but it offered voters more choices.

"Stark certainly would not have lost without the 'top two,' " said Eric McGhee, who tracks the reforms at the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan think tank. Whether new House members like Swalwell govern as moderates remains to be seen. "These people have not served in office," McGhee said, "so that was a major objective that really we can't evaluate yet."

Levitt said there is a danger that the "top two" primary could splinter the electorate among a large number of candidates, allowing the top two finishers to reach the general election with tiny percentages of the vote that fail to reflect the majority of the district.

"Californians will have to see how it goes," Levitt said. In districts like San Francisco or Orange County that are dominated by one party, he said, the system is less likely to produce middle-of-the road moderates but it probably will "tamp down the extremes" of the party in power because candidates will have to court all primary voters, not just partisans.

Swalwell called the two reforms "a wake-up call for all of us that you have to talk to a broad base of the constituency now."